Get Your Prospects to Notice You: Customer Centric Sales Engagement Practices that Really Work

Speaker A: The open rate of a, uh, FedEx box on your doorstep is like 100%. So all those factors go in and there's a lot of scarcity involved. You know, not everyone is doing it so you don't get as many of it. And there's cost constraints so you can't just go and close your eyes and spray and pray. And all those reasons make it a really effective channel in today's world that has, you know, pendulum has shifted and the digital saturation is more than ever.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Thoughts on Selling podcast.

Speaker C: I'm Lee Levitt, sales coach, podcast host

Speaker B: and author of the Second Meeting and together We Win both due out later this year. Today we're talking about breaking through the

Speaker C: noise, not with more emails, but with

Speaker B: something that actually lands on someone's desk.

Speaker C: My guest is Chris Rudigrap, co founder and co CEO of Sendoso, the largest

Speaker B: direct mail and gifting platform in the world.

Speaker C: Before building a company with global warehouses

Speaker B: and $150 million in funding, Chris was

Speaker C: a top seller who got 90% response rates until email got commoditized and he

Speaker B: had to find another edge.

Speaker C: Here's what to listen for. Why hearing a dog bark on a sales call led to booking a meeting and eventually an entire company. The psychology of reciprocity, surprise and delight, pattern disruption and the emotional connection of getting something delivered. And why people buy from people isn't just a motto. It's how they build their whole product. If you're tired of sending emails into the void and wondering how to actually get someone's attention, this one's for you. Let's go. Today it is my absolute pleasure to have Chris Rudigrupp join me to have a conversation about selling Chris, I think we're going to have a really fascinating conversation today. Here's the first question. Who is Chris?

Speaker A: Chris is the co founder and co CEO of Sendoso. We're the largest direct mail and gifting platform. Started the company about nine years ago and prior to that spent about a decade in software sales. I've always been an entrepreneur. I was the kid selling mistletoe or lemonade. Started a company in college, so always had that entrepreneurial bug. I live just a little north of San Francisco in Marin, have a amazing family, a, uh, two year old son, an amazing golden doodle dog, and I love getting outside and camping and hiking and backpacking as much as possible.

Speaker C: Sweet. You're in Marin county, but you didn't mention mountain biking.

Speaker A: I know, I do a fair amount of mountain biking as well. But sometimes it's a little dangerous and hectic. So I stick to the easier hiking avenues sometimes.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm a gravel rider and trail runner. So let's get right into it. Chris, I want to get into your origin story of why you launched Sandoso. But before that, let's talk a bit about sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it started in college. So I was a marketing major. So I had that side of me which was how do you build brand, how do you build awareness, how do you market, advertise? And so that was my first foray into go to market. Started a company in college, so I had to go and sell, find customers. And so that was a quick sales lesson in how to find customers when you need them most. And then when I sold that company, I moved into marketing again. Then quickly realized that ah, as a marketer, I was helping sales get way richer than I was. So I said, hey, sales is where all the money's at. Let me switch gears here. And so I jumped into sales and then I was this creative seller who was always looking for an edge and kind of mid probably it was like 2014ish, got excited about how do you automate things? And that was first where I came up m with the whole mailbird concept. And at the time that was not easy. I still remember like copying and pasting parts of my old email into the new email, making it pretend like I was following up and exporting and importing salesforce fields just to keep track of where my mail merge sequence was.

Speaker C: With the occasional embarrassment, right?

Speaker A: Oh yeah, exactly. But it worked. And I was getting like 90% response rates. Everyone felt obligated to reply to email back in kind of the the mid 2010s. And then that's not true now, not even close. And then I think the email sequencing tools came on the scene hot. It was Yesware, ToutApp, Sales Loft outreach, Apollo, the list goes on and on and on and on. And that quickly saw a decline in open and response rates and also alienated email ascents, which was primary communication for me as a seller became more of hey, you're spamming me. Hey, unsubscribe. And so I said, hey, if I'm gonna last here as a seller, I need to start doing other things. And so I started writing handwritten notes and sending em out in the mail. I'd be on a call and hear a dog bark and I'd send a dog toy after from Amazon or I'd go steal swag from the marketing closet and pack up some Cool mugs or some beanies and things of that nature. And that worked so well. It was just like running a little mini mail room, which was a nightmare. Run down to FedEx.

Speaker C: I'm going to pause you right there, Chris. For me, as a sales leader and a sales coach, the single most important attribute of a salesperson is curiosity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And what I just heard you talk about was the curiosity of what's going on in that person's world that you can connect with.

Speaker A: Exactly. The. It was a personalization. It was the relevance. And then it also got down to, how do I use curiosity to come up with something to grab their attention? Because at the end of the day, uh, grabbing someone's attention is what you're trying to do in sales and marketing. And you have to be different than the next person that's doing that. And so that's where I really found out this. At the time, I thought it was this niche little area where I was like, cool, I'm booking all these meetings. I'm the top seller. This is awesome. But then the light bulb went off. Wow, this is hard to do.

Speaker C: You used a differentiated door opener.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then two, you said you were the top seller. Those don't necessarily go together. So one, you had the curiosity, and then two, you had the sales chops to actually pull that thing through.

Speaker A: Yes, indeed. It also helped because when I was expense reporting all these Amazon receipts And all these FedEx things, because I was a top seller, the team was like, cool, keep doing what you want to do, and also, please help others do what you want to do. And so it was kind of that, like, well, how do I help others? Slash, this is problems, but maybe needs to be solved. And that was that aha moment where, hey, maybe I can create a platform that outsources the operational complexities, the fulfillment, the box packing, the shipping, and create a platform that everyone can use, but more importantly, selfishly, that I could use myself.

Speaker C: So you saw the opportunity to operationalize what you were doing on your living room floor with boxes from whoever it was. I get mine from Amazon.

Speaker A: Uline was the big one.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, Uline. Right. Boxes from Uline and tape dispensers and, like, bubble wrap and all sorts of crap. Some of us have been there. Not everybody understands the power of dimensional direct mail. Yeah, not everybody understands the power of breaking someone's focus on what they're doing by having something hit their desk. And not an email, because an email lands with a very light impact.

Speaker A: 100%. There's just so much different psychology to the tangible, um, unboxing of a box, the reciprocity of getting a gift or a really creative mailer that you feel more inclined to reply. The open rate of a FedEx, uh, box on your doorstep is like a hundred percent. So all those factors go in and there's a lot of scarcity involved. Not everyone is doing it, so you don't get as many of it. And there's cost constraints so you can't just go and close your eyes and spray and pray. And all those reasons make it a really effective channel. In today's world that has pendulum has shifted and the digital saturation is more than ever.

Speaker C: Name me any time in history where dimensional direct mail didn't fail to deliver.

Speaker A: I know that's the thing. And I think for a while sales and marketing teams were hooked on the cheap drug of email because it was easy and easier. You didn't necessarily have all these operational components to it, even though it was more effective. It was just enough harder that you just didn't do it. I can go after the little harder channel because I am m desperate for more pipeline or I'm desperate for more meetings or like I'm desperate to close these deals faster.

Speaker C: Right. So I love this, I love your origin story. And so you had this moment of this is how most resellers get into business. I built something for myself and I'm going to go sell it to other people now too. You had this moment of I should build a system and there's a market opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think that market opportunity is where maybe I got a little bit of luck because my first version was, hey, I'm going to scratch my own itch. I'm going to build this myself, I'm going to use some of my savings and hire an outsourced engineer to build version one. And I said, hey, if I can build this first version, I'm going to be a better seller, I'm going to make way more money in commission and I'll pay myself back in a month. That was easy for me to have conviction around. It was then until I started getting people asking about it. And then I said, hey, let me open this up to others. And then it was, hey, this is actually working so well. Let me go raise some friends and family money. Then let me go raise a seed, an A, a, b, a c.150 million funding later, hundreds of millions are spent on the platform.

Speaker C: It's like, and to be clear, Chris, you're not talking about just a software platform.

Speaker A: No. Yeah. That was the other kind of maybe late insane moment of my, uh, entrepreneurial endeavor, which was I can run warehouses globally with supply chain. Because of that maybe being naive, I jumped in and said, I'll figure it out, not knowing how hard it was going to be.

Speaker C: Thank goodness you did.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank goodness I did. There is the complexity of there's this amazing software platform that integrates into CRMs marketing sales tools to orchestrate it with teams, budgets, analytics. There's a whole financial infrastructure platform behind the scenes for all the payments that are going through it. There's then the warehouses and supply chain and drop shipping and everything that goes into this global delivery network. And then over the last few years, and something has always been a dream is this data and AI layer which 5, 6 years ago we called it data Science Machine Learning and it was this recommendation engine. Today we just called AI. But that is even more interesting because of the fact that it can make all of the sellers on the platform like 10x more productive because it's suggesting what to send who to send to the mailing address you should be sending it to. The note is drafted for you, that's handwritten with the gift. And so it just makes it that much easier to use the platform.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome. That personalization of Charlie is a sailor, so I'm gonna send him something nautical.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Or Sally loves dogs. I'm gonna send her a plush toy of Saint uh, Bernard. Cause I know that's the breed she loves.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker C: With a handwritten note that corresponds. It's not just the platform, it's not just the operational background that gets that plush toy from supplier to warehouse to Sally's desk. It's the personalization around all that. So that Joe's salesperson can say, I need to open a door here. That leads me to this question. When I ran into your team in Austin at the Pavilion conference, the uh, GTM 2024, I took away the impression that it was mostly about post sale appreciation. And what you've been describing is pre sale door opening and it's two sides of the same thing. But how much of it is door opening versus appreciation?

Speaker A: It's all across the board. I'd say probably more than 50% is more top of funnel, mid funnel. But for a lot of our customers, and depending on kind of the Persona or the customer, they might be even more focused on the land and expand motion. The how do I drive my large existing base into you cross selling new product lines. And so that was a hot topic too in kind of 22, 23, 24. Where interest rates spiked, funding was down. People needed to do more with less. And one of that tactics that you could do more with less is keeping an existing customer. Expanding an existing customer is less expensive than going to find a new one. We went well with that message and doubled down on our messaging related to that. And that really spoke to the market needs, too.

Speaker C: That's awesome. I recently dropped a podcast with Alex Raymond, who runs Amplify AM M Account Management, about the value of current customers versus new customers. Yeah, current customers deliver 87% of the revenues, I think his number is. And all of the profit or more.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: New customers cost you. Existing customers. Keep the lights on. That was episode 89, came out February 10th. A nice mention based on your conversation about the LAN and expand where the existing customers live. They will open a package from a known supplier.

Speaker A: 100%. And some of our customers are, along with the gift, are using it for infotainment or educational content, too, which is like, hey, here's a really cool video mailer from our C suite talking about this new product line we launched. Or, here's a, uh, custom Mad Libs book that you can fill in the blank and learn about this new product vision we're launching. Or, hey, here's a quarterly, uh, magazine with interesting case studies and content. And so I, I think some people think, oh, gifting. I just got to send swagger. Bottles of wine. No. Or mailers. Oh, it's just postcards. No, there's so much more in between. When you think about it, that can really unlock a lot of opportunity.

Speaker C: That's fascinating. I hadn't even thought of the customer provided material. Plush toy. You get out of the open market, you customize it, you go to an ASA rep, you get squeeze balls that have the vendor name on it so that your customer says, here's something that's unique to us. Here's something that might be unique to an individual customer, and you provide the management and fulfillment of that.

Speaker A: Yep, exactly. We're printing it, we're getting it, we're shipping it. Uh, yeah. The world's your oyster in terms of things that you can do through our platform, which was partly by design. So it could be 10,000 postcards. One day. It could be, hey, I know you are a Seattle Seahawks fan and you just won the Super Bowl. I'm going to send you a little onesie for your baby that's two months old

Speaker C: too soon.

Speaker A: The relevance and the personalization just make the difference.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's awesome. So what's the biggest thing you've shipped?

Speaker A: We've shipped Traeger grills. Those have been pretty huge in terms of big. We've shipped custom couches in terms of dollars. There's been Rolexes some of the time. It's not the size or the cost, it's the creative aspect of. I saw a recent campaign where someone was sending empty pizza boxes with a, uh, hungry for a new solution. Let's chat by the way. And after chatting I'll send you a door dash card for a real pizza. That send was like five bucks to ship one of those pizza boxes. And wow, was the open rate quote, unquote.

Speaker C: Yeah. A hundred years ago we would send half of a $20 bill, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Let's put it together and have lunch, right? Something like that. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Early in my career we sent footballs.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: To prospective resellers and we got like a 75% response rate. It's like this was a few years ago. Yeah. Uh, nobody could refuse. And it was timely season wise. Nobody could refuse a conversation after getting pigskin in the mail.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's just like that's how unique and different it can be.

Speaker C: Yeah. That's awesome. So let's talk about what you sell and I'm not talking about the goods but when a customer, a big customer or a mid sized customer engages with you, what's the one thing that Sandoso um, does that nobody else does for them?

Speaker A: It's a great question. There's a kind of couple different ways I could talk about that. We at uh, Surf is sometimes we're selling reciprocity and the psychology behind it. Or we're selling relationships.

Speaker C: Say more about that.

Speaker A: We're selling the emotional connection that uh, comes along with getting something delivered to your doorstep. So that's the reciprocity psychology, that's the surprise and delight moment, that's the pattern disruption. That's the relationship. And so that is like the feeling that we're sending now. We do that by way of this really unique software plus fulfillment and logistics infrastructure. We do this through this one of a kind data layer and AI on top of that. And we do that by way of helping with all of the services surrounding that.

Speaker C: But, but the customer doesn't care about any of that.

Speaker A: The customer cares about the end goal. And what we're trying to sell is what's going to get them that pipeline, what's going to get them that revenue and what's going to get them that relationship.

Speaker C: It's the customer delight. It's their customer delight that they're looking for in the same way that Disney focuses on customer delight. You can't look under the mountain unless you know someone. You can't go inside and see how they make the sausage, so to speak.

Speaker A: But it happens even more important in this competitive world we live in where there's a lot of commoditized product and service offerings or you look pretty similar to your competitor if you look at their website and their pricing. And so how do you differentiate is by way of a more unique buying process or a buyer's journey or salesmanship where you come across more genuine and more of a friendly, consultative person that's trying to help. And one way to come across is by sprinkling in gifts and mailers that create a different experience.

Speaker C: Two years ago, I used a dimensional direct mail piece. It was a small silver bucket, a small silver shovel, some sunflower seeds. Oh, cool. Sent it out in the spring and I said, let's grow something together.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that was tailored to the season as opposed to the individual sales leader that I sent it to. Maybe a few of them didn't have green thumbs. Maybe a few of them weren't so interested in sunflower seeds. I didn't have that visibility. You've even got that.

Speaker A: I have that. Yes, we have that visibility. But I think there is multiple ways that you can think about perfect personalization, relevance. You could think about it personalized down to the human. And what does Chris like? You could personalize it to more of a general Persona and make some assumptions. You could personalize it to the campaign that you're running that's based on your brand or their brand. So there's lots of different ways that you can get to personalization and like what you just shared with that planting a seed is super creative and gonna be a lot different than an email in their inbox. So kudos to you. I think that's a real fun campaign. And one of the things you hit on there too is it's not just about the gift or the dimensional mailer, but it's about the note that goes along with it. You get two shots on goal compared to an email where you just have one text block. But with the gift, uh, or dimensional mailer, you have the mailer itself for the gift and the note that goes with it. And then if you're truly savvy, you're also before and after you're combining, uh, some messaging, email, phone call, social, a multi channel that is connecting all the dots.

Speaker C: Here's a funny story. For you, Chris. Years ago, when I first launched the Accelerator Group, it was an outsourced marketing agency and I used a series of six mailers. One was like a Wall Street Journal article with the prospects company written on the front with a fake article.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: XYZ Company has experienced 87% growth by working with the Accelera Group, blah, blah, blah. And so we had like slick ad sheets. We had that. There was a campaign of six, one a week like clockwork. And then I'd follow up and invariably, probably two thirds of the time I would call and I'd say, hey, did you see the Wall Street Journal article? No. Did you see that Science of Marketing article I sent you? No. Did you see the big blue envelopes?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Was that you?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's like what you're speaking on too, which we've seen across the board, even on our team, is certain sellers get cold feet for making pure cold calls because they've got to be on their toes. This kind of warms it up a little bit. You've got something to say that's relevant, something to say that once they say, oh yeah, I did get that, then the door's open now or hey, thank you, I appreciate that. And now you've earned that 15 second call, that 30 second call which then hopefully can convert into a booked meeting or another follow up. It goes hand in hand with these other channels because you can stitch them together and create a more warm experience.

Speaker C: Chris, what are some of the more interesting campaigns you've run? What's particularly caught your eye of. Wow, that's clever.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think the clever creativity piece is what really drives home for me. One that, uh, I saw a few years ago that I still love is this was by our team where we had a prospect come by a booth at a conference. He had broken rib from a skiing accident and he was on crutches. So we followed that up with sending over a, uh, Kansas City barbecue ribs in the mail back to his office and to his home. And so things like that just are so out of the ordinary that you just can't not smile. And he shared that story with this whole company. We got the deal. And so it's things like that break down the divide of a company selling to another company. And it's in turn the human psychology of a person selling to another person.

Speaker C: You have the capacity to handle one offs 100%.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly so. And globally too. So along with having warehouses where we can kit items together at scale, where we could send one item or 10,000 items. But we also have this really unique curated drop ship network around the world. So it could be the barbecue ribs, it could be macaroon bakery in Paris. And so that gives us this unfair advantage where we can really find that perfect gift or be where our uh, prospects or customers. Customers and prospects are. And that's really critical.

Speaker C: That reminds me of a very savvy concierge or butler who knows what you need.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Without you asking. And when you put your hand down, it's there.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. That's how we want to make it feel. And then we layer on what we call our campaign studio team. That's almost agency like in ideating with you going out and providing you multiple options for these different campaign ideas too for listeners being like, oh, I don't know what I should send. We've got that solved. Whether it's through AI suggestions or a uh, services team. I think besides the, hey, this is a uh, hard, not as easy as sending an email. There's a lot of people coming up with other excuses and so we've tried to solve all those excuses and provide this kind of wow factor experience.

Speaker C: There's a lot of senior people out there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Who have left digital breadcrumbs.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Around what they're interested in, what they care about, what they do on weekends.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: 100%. And we're able to find those, capture those. We also can do first and third party there. So third party is these breadcrumbs across the Internet. First party is things locked like in a zoom call or a gong call recording that's in your CRM. We're pulling those out, mapping those in. And so when six months later, when you close this prospect and now they're a customer and you want to send them something, boom. We'll recommend something that the sales rep talked to that prospect on a call, uh, recording months prior. And so that data set is usually just lost in called transcripts. Now we're pulling that out and making it available for this like interest graph.

Speaker C: That's absolutely fascinating. So I'm going to ask this carefully. Is this a push business or a pull business for you?

Speaker A: In what regards?

Speaker C: You've got a unique offering. Uh, you've got it pretty darn well sorted out.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: It seems there's a good return of if I spend X on prospects or customers, I should expect somewhere around Y, which is some good multiple of x 100%. And is it just a matter of customers that haven't been exposed to. You need to hear about you or are you active, there's going to be a layup, or are you actively out there selling?

Speaker A: That's a good question. Now, I get what you're saying. We're about half inbound, half outbound. We have a lot of people that heard about us, hear about us through typical B2B marketing that come inbound to us. We have a huge repeat customer base of, uh, people switching companies. But then to your point, there's still lots of people that just don't know we exist. And so we got to go out there and educate the market or don't know that, that this is even possible. And then we also have to help people unlearn the GTM playbook of yesteryear and help them see the light of new possibilities.

Speaker C: The more. Faster, louder, louder, louder. All caps. Bold. Yeah, hasn't worked for a while.

Speaker A: Exactly. So a lot of our outbound, which is that push approach, is us just educating the market, saying we exist. And then once they hear about it, it's, it's oftentimes they're like, why don't you reach out to me earlier?

Speaker C: Yeah. So just to be clear, for the listeners, this is not a, uh, sponsored episode. This is a conversation about how to do things differently in sales. Chris lived the pain of selecting and boxing and shipping. I've lived that pain. I've coached enterprise clients to do exactly this so that they can get differentiated entry into prospects. There are other services that I've had on the podcast of identifying the 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon who getting warm intros and this. And Sendoso and Chris's company is another strategic tool in the arsenal of doing things more creatively, doing things more effectively, and not just sending more emails. I was in the email sending business many years ago. It is not a good business to be in these days.

Speaker A: Exactly to your point, um, on direct mail and gifting in general, we didn't invent this. Listeners can go out and do this on their own. No Sendoso sponsor at all. We are just making it easier if you do want to scale it, and I think that's the goal.

Speaker C: People were doing this before the cloud existed.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly A hundred percent. You don't have to be a, uh, Fortune 100 to do this. You could be two people in a garage starting up a new company and do this. And I think that's the beauty of it as well. I think some channels, like events, for example, like if you're trying to sponsor a huge conference and you're spending $100,000 on a conference, that can feel a little out of reach for a small company. But direct mail, dimensional mail, you can do five of them. Like you said, you can go out and pick A list of 6 people and mail them something this week.

Speaker C: In the past I've outsourced card sending to uh, sendcards.com I think it is. And because it's so easy, instead of having to get cards and work on my shitty handwriting and get stamps and lick envelopes and all that stuff, feed a list of names in, write a message and a handwritten note goes out at the time I want it to.

Speaker A: Yep, we'll do that soon.

Speaker C: The same situation exists here. And I'll guess the more thought the customer puts into the item, the messaging, the packaging, all that, right? There's a difference between sending priority mail and FedEx.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: You and I were talking, every FedEx package gets open, not every UPS box gets opened.

Speaker A: No, FedEx has 100% open rate.

Speaker C: Yeah. Ah, so. So as the co CEO of the company, how have you shifted your selling approach over the years?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I think the early years it was really uh, focused on pure evangelism and a lot of that was based on, you know, the hey, you can click a button and send something. Now we have a much more mature, decade old product where we can showcase how you can use AI and automations, how you can set up these more intricate campaigns. And so it's a bit of, there's this maturity model of how we understand where a prospect is in that model and how we help them with their needs. It's also who we sell to. Originally I thought we're just going to sell to sales leaders and sales reps because that's who I was. And now we've realized it's marketing leaders, it's partner leaders, it's customer account management leaders. Our uh, ICP has changed over the years. We've also changed how we sell in terms of how we enable our team. There's a lot of new AI products that are helping us with call coaching, call enablement, role playing and enablement, et cetera. So a lot of areas in terms of just the sales process has evolved too.

Speaker C: Yeah, interesting. So Chris, what would you say your organization's secret sauce is?

Speaker A: Our organization secret sauce is really this. I think it's a mixture of tenacity to win. We're really a competitive bunch. I think that stems from me being a seller back in the day. And then we want to create these wow experiences and create these relationships that could last forever. Our whole product is based on the this ability to build better relationships with drive revenue. And my motto has always been people buy from people. And so with that we really, whether it's through our company culture or it's through how we prospect or it's how we help our customers and how our product shows up, at the end of the day, it's how you create these relationships and bridge the gap for human connection.

Speaker C: That's great. And I'll add to your statement of people buy from people they trust.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly.

Speaker C: And one way of establishing trust is making the deposit in the relationship bank account by offering something of value without asking for something in return. And the more customized that value is, the deeper the relationship goes. I surveyed all of my coaching clients last fall and I asked them, coffee or tea? I got one water response and then everyone that said coffee, I said ground or beans. I had one client say, I want to go to beans, but I haven't yet. So he got beans and a link to a good conical grinder. I didn't have the budget to send him a $150 grinder in addition to, uh, coffee and a customized yeti tumbler. Customized, yeah.

Speaker A: Makes a difference.

Speaker C: Yeah. So yeah, that customization. And by the way, I see those clients holding those mugs all the time.

Speaker A: Mhm. Exactly.

Speaker C: There's a theory of don't send them your swag, send them their swag or send them something unique. And sometimes our swag is good.

Speaker A: It depends on maybe where they are in the sales. Like they've been a customer for five years. They're like itching to rep your swag because they are bought into the brand. You've helped them, um, maybe you've helped them get promoted. I think that's the end goal for a lot of software or service businesses is like, can you help your customer champion get promoted and if so, they want to rep you forever.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. It's win win. One of my long term coaching clients said, hey, I see you're wearing a seller group swag all the time. Can I get some? Do I want my successful client wandering around that three letter company with my swag on display? It's like, yes, what size would you like? Here's the catalog from Queensborough. They're the company that does all my embroidery. Pick anything you want. Just tell me size and color.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker C: So yeah, it's people buy from people they trust. And I talked with a CIO in the middle of a research project and he said, you know, there was a guy that came in and he was selling storage for One of the storage companies. And he said to us, after spending some time talking with you and your team, I don't think what we have here is quite right for you. He referred us to a direct competitor, uh, because he thought that direct competitor was actually a better fit.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker C: And the CIO said, I will follow that rep to the ends of the earth. I don't care what he's selling, whether he's selling cloud or storage or shoes or Lamborghinis, if I will go to him first.

Speaker A: Yeah, that person he trusts and he's being consultative and not selling a solution that the buyer, uh, doesn't need.

Speaker C: And you know how that travels. So I love the fact that you're in the business of customer delight and even pre customer delight, you're in the business of customer delight. Like whatever I need, you make it happen. Which is so cool. If I want Kansas City ribs, they'll show up Exactly. At my prospect store. So Chris, what's next on the horizon for you?

Speaker A: We're doubling, tripling down on AI and data. We were born as this logistics company and software company and I think we continue to evolve to be more of a data company, which is what our customers really want. Because good data powers really good AI. And so you'll start to see more autonomous agent workflows through our platform. You'll see better data recommendations and then ultimately I think you'll just see more of Sandosa out there. I think that people are starting to get that digital fatigue. It's real dimensional mail. Direct mail will be not a tactic but a channel that people will invest in more. So we're going to be there to help them win.

Speaker C: I love that we are seeing a bit of a bifurcation or bipolarization of the low hanging fruit or the low value transactions are going to be coming increasingly automated. And we've been saying this for a long time. When barcodes and then QR codes came out, people said we don't need reps anymore. I had Garth Fasano talking about the AI inbound sales rep. Mhm. Right. Where if you're a contractor, you don't want to miss that call. At 3:00 in the morning, the pipes are burst, but you don't want to get up. So that inbound AI rep takes the call.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: And books the appointment for nine o'clock the next morning. Moving in that direction. And at the same time your organization's focus is on customer delight.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker C: Which Chris, bless you. That's how I'm going to say it.

Speaker A: I love It So, uh, this has

Speaker C: been a fascinating conversation. Anything else we want to talk about?

Speaker A: We covered so much and I think our energy shows that we both care about this topic and it's a fun conversation. I think we nailed it.

Speaker C: So two questions. First question is where can people find you?

Speaker A: Yeah, people can find me on LinkedIn. Add me would love to chat there. You can send uh, me an email if you have question or follow up. It's Chris K. Rs. That's a. And then if you're curious about some of the cool stuff we talked about today or want to see some inspiration, we got a lot of fun case studies and success stories@sendosa.com.

Speaker C: great. And then I'm going to ask you a second question for the customer that wants to break out of the same o same o set of sales results of my pipeline looks like shit. I've had a 40% increase in quota this year. I don't have any idea how I'm going to make it. I just know that for the past 12 years I have through grunting it out. Right. So what you said to me was it's not just the sales leader. Yeah, right. The sales leader might not be the economic buyer. They might be a key stakeholder. The economic buyer might exist in marketing. Who? Maybe someone who runs field marketing.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: What's the ideal profile of that customer

Speaker A: at ah, larger companies? Usually marketing holds the budget and the purse strings, but it's enablement for the sales team and the sellers. At certain smaller companies, sales teams can raise their hand and set this up themselves. Even sellers themselves as well. It's the person that's feeling the pain the most that wants to champion this. The new solution or just going out there doing it yourself Again, you don't always need us to move the needle. Go out there. There's nothing stopping you from today going out there and mailing out 10 millers.

Speaker C: Right. Start with a proof of concept. Wow. A personalized yeti tumbler. Or in my case, I sent out gift baskets of all Cape Cod items. Cape Cod chips. Yeah. Cape Cod sea salt and a handful of other Cape Cod jams and jellies. And it was all Cape Cod. And so that was very personally curated. Clients from all over the country loved it because it was something unique. They couldn't get Cape Cod jam in Denver, Colorado.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: No, I love that. That's a great idea.

Speaker C: Chris, this has been fabulous. Thanks again for the work that you do. My goal is to fix how this industry sells a little humanity and building connections between people goes a long way, so I appreciate the work that you're doing and your team is doing.

Speaker A: Thanks for having me on, Lee. This was a fun conversation and thanks so much for, uh, taking the time to chat.

Speaker C: Thanks Chris.

Speaker B: Another deep dive into the topic of sales excellence and the performance mindset. If you found this conversation interesting, I would appreciate it if you would share the podcast with a co worker or two. And to explore this topic in more depth, send me a note via the contact form on podcast. Thoughts on selling.com or find some time for us to talk at meet.accellergroup.com Thanks.